500 
JEROME BUCK. 
and the fields, might be even more impressed by reflecting that in 
the removal of the forests and the substitution of the meadows 
and the fields, in the development of agriculture, without which 
civilization must perish, with which encouraged and renewed, its 
progress is capable of putting foot on the highest stage this side 
heaven. In the development of civilization and agriculture our 
faithful horse has been our most helpful friend. It does not lessen 
our estimate of the benefit of his services that he has been helped 
himself in their performances. If their ancestors had not helped 
to extract stumps and haul logs in the outlying country when 
New York was a village, we should have fewer draught horses 
upon our streets to scan and admire; he is too short-sighted for 
your profession who does not admire often the quivering sides, 
tense muscles and flashing eyes, which here and there in the city 
make part of its interesting panorama of animal life. There is a 
mysterious community, says an eloquent orator, between man and 
the lower animals with which Providence has associated us. 
There are few things in which the wisdom and goodness of a 
superintending Providence are more apparent than in the relation 
established between man and those domestic animals which com¬ 
pose his family. What could have conducted man to the selection 
of those animals with which he has surrounded himself, to share 
his labors and minister to his wants, but the unseen power of 
Providence guiding him to those whom time and patience would 
enable him to domesticate, to the exclusion of others destined to 
preserve their native ferocity. It is evident to my mind that 
man was led into these associations by a wisdom beyond his own; 
that those higher principles which led him to organize families, 
communities and nations, have led him also into these humble but 
Scarcely less important associations with the domestic animals. 
Look at the wonderful phenomenon of vaccination, a mild and 
gentle disease which we have borrowed from the cow, and which 
furnishes us an all but infallible protection against one of the 
most frightful maladies that may waste mankind. Perhaps it 
was from this community of nature between men and the lower 
animals that the Roman jurists were led to define the law of 
nature as that law which is common to all animated beings. 
